


who did you love?

by angelica_barnes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Love, Multi, finding and losing each other over and over again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 22:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14435505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica_barnes/pseuds/angelica_barnes
Summary: steve and bucky always seem to miss each other.tony can't move on. bruce is afraid.peggy reminisces and sam is sad.wanda is angry and vision is fascinated by her.there are children but in this world children never get very far.clint and natasha are in love and that's it.oh, and thanos wins.





	who did you love?

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from "Let It Be Me" by Jennifer Lopez. based off "Youth" by Daughter.

**1\. (1928)**

 

When they meet, it’s fireworks and sparks and the rain snuffing out the flames of candles; their fingers brush on the way home and suddenly they’re grasping each other as tight as possible, arms locked and mouths pressed soft against one another.

The rain pours down and thunder rumbles, and in the midst of the shrieking panic for cover, brown eyes meet blue.

 

**2\. (1944)**

 

Her lips are red.

Soft and red, curled around pearly white teeth, and her smile is almost as beautiful as her dark eyes. She’s gentle, and careful, but fierce and protective and rash. She kisses him when no one’s looking; Bucky’s looking.

Cheers come muffled from inside, the soft glow and warmth of lanterns and loud music coming through the closed door, and he chases Bucky out into the dark.

He grabs his best friend’s arm and Bucky wrenches away, turning around to face the captain he no longer recognizes; tears stream down his cheeks but he looks angry.

Brown eyes meet blue, but they feel no love.

 

**3\. (1945)**

 

He still kisses Peggy, and Bucky still follows him into the jaws of death; they bite.

Peggy lets him nurse his drink, and tells him how it’s not his fault, as if that’s exactly what he needs and wants to hear.

Instead, his best friend’s voice echoes in his head twice over;  _ You loved me, _ a mournful rasp croons.

_ You didn’t follow me, _ the other screams.

 

**4\. (1944)**

 

When she kisses Steve instead of him, she sees his angry eyes. He’s jealous, but never tells her so; when she kisses him at night, he fists his fingers in her hair and seems almost desperate, but not in the way so many would think.

Her captain dies and her inventor turns to stone; he meets a blonde woman with a crooked nose who smiles with lipstick on her teeth and marries her; her name is Maria.

She marries a veteran who can’t sleep through the night, and wonders why she misses angry silence.

(Her son looks just like his. They never say a word; this time, the silence is sad.)

 

**5\. (1991)**

 

It’s funny, how he hears about the accident from the news. (It’s really not.)

He’s at home, losing his hearing and inhibitions by drowning himself in obnoxious music and alcohol. There are people making out in random corners of his no-longer-very-

clean house and he’s sprawled on the white couch now stained with rum when Rhodey walks in with a sad smile.

He helps him stand on shaky legs and takes him to his parents’ empty bedroom, and then he turns on the television.

There’s been a car wreck.

Two deaths.

No witnesses.

Maria and Howard Stark.

His mind is too numb, his body too intoxicated, but he still can feel the tightening of his chest.

He passes out in Rhodey’s arms and never feels the kiss pressed to his lips in comfort.

(He wishes he wouldn’t wake up in the morning.)

 

**6\. (2005)**

 

Her eyes are green. Bewitching, beautiful green. He can’t move, but he doesn’t want to.

She doesn’t try to seduce him. She smiles, and she laughs, but it’s genuine; she doesn’t try to subtly flash a glimpse of her thighs in that black dress, and she doesn’t push her cold fingers up under his shirt.

She does, however, try to follow him.

He leaves the party on his own and five blocks later, hears a trashcan bang loudly against the sidewalk. He whips around, weapon drawn, and finds her pointing a gun to his head.

They both tremble.

He drops his bow and wraps his arms around her waist in the gentlest way he knows how; the pistol falls to the ground with a thud and she melts into his embrace.

When the night ends, they are still.

(Yellow eyes watch.)

 

**7\. (2010)**

 

Tony’s hands are strong in his, his grin bright even with the bags under his eyes. Everything is white, clean white, and Rhodey feels so happy he could die.

And so uneasy.

He sees Tony’s face fall too late. He hears Tony’s scream too late. He feels Tony’s hands pushing him behind him too late.

His knees buckle and he falls, with Tony there to catch him, and he can’t see anything but Tony’s pleading eyes and moving lips.

He reaches up and touches his lover’s face.

The ambulance arrives too late.

 

**8\. (2011)**

 

He holds Riley close at night. No one comments. No one notices.

They take the wings out for a test run at dawn, when they can still see the orange and pink and such in the sky. They’re alone, or at least they think so, and their kisses and soft and sweet and few.

When the superiors give them the mission, they shrug. It’s nothing they haven’t done before.

Their fellow soldiers watch for their return.

Come morning, only one shadow greets them.

(He claws his wings to smithereens.)

 

**9\. (2012)**

 

When they’d said they wanted heroes, what they really meant was dangerous people with somewhat good intentions. Even if those intentions often amounted to colossal failures with many casualties.

And so there’s a red-haired woman, looking dead on her feet and yet as determined as they come; a sad-eyed frowning captain who doesn’t seem to think he deserves his stars and stripes; a foreign god who’s too handsome considering his taste; and a man who turns green around the gills but is as gentle and scared as they come.

He drinks, and the green man, Bruce, finds him blackened and breathing in bursts, curled in a corner. He calms him down, and it’s the first panic attack that comes but certainly not the last, and he finds himself thinking of Rhodey, the bullets and the sparks and the rough fingers.

He knows then that Bruce’ll never admit to loving him.

(They both shy away from this chance they’ve been given. Neither doesn’t regret it.)

 

**10\. (2013)**

 

The doe-eyed girl is asleep. Cold and frozen and so tiny, and he rests his hand on the glass.

The mad men are calling for him.

He sees the release button. He hears the footsteps. He feels his sister’s worry.

Dark eyes stare back him, blank.

The red button is still there.

He turns and runs.

 

**11\. (2014)**

 

Blue eyes meet brown.

There are storms brewing. He feels as if he should know this man, a name echoes but it sounds wrong -

The man utters a haunted word.

He offers him his broken and heavy heart with shaking hands.

The soldier stares and then hardens, opening his mouth and shattering the barely beating organ being held out to him.

Brown eyes can’t see.

(Blue eyes cry.)

(Green eyes watch and wait. The scene is all too familiar.)

 

**12\. (2014)**

 

Steve is back again. With a black man this time, who shakes her wrinkled hand gently and then holds it, without seeming to notice he is.

He listens to her stories, and laughs along, while Steve watches with a sad smile and stares off into space; his name is Sam, Steve says.

She feels as if in another lifetime, they could be made for each other, but still, it’s Steve she finds herself wanting.

But now, blue eyes don’t find hers.

(It’s been too long and she knows he’ll end up with the wrong person, except that’s exactly who someone like Steve is meant to be with.)

 

**13\. (2014)**

 

Her head is half-shaved, the rest hanging in tight braids half-done with beads. Her cheekbones are sharp, set in a daring smile, and she never tells him to run.

He is entranced. The building falls.

She pushes a little boy out of the way, instead letting herself be crushed; as the nine bullets hit, he wishes he could’ve learned her name.

(At least Clint will live on with his Widow.)

 

**14\. (2014)**

 

The girl is looking at him with knotted hair and wild eyes, but she doesn’t attack him. Even if she did, she wouldn’t win. He knows that much.

He hears the whispers. She lost her brother, they say.

She screams when they land, and everything around her except for them bursts into angry red flames.

She crumples to the ground and even he can’t bring himself to try and carry her home.

(He’ll make her a new home in time, but neither of them know that yet.)

 

**15\. (2015)**

 

A blue-eyed boy with white wings stares. His smile is wide, his eyes full of mirth, but he can feel the sadness radiating off the angel. They never touch. How could they?

Golden light is all he can see, and black spots. The world bursts into white, the claws raking at his eyes.

He wakes and asks where he is. Steve’s smile is still sad; now sadder.

It’s then he knows he’ll never see his angel again.

(All the angels weep as one of their own falls.)

 

**16\. (2016)**

 

In her sleep.

She’s gone.

In her sleep.

He closes his eyes and breathes in deep. He does not think of her smile. He does not wish for her voice. He does not dream about her eyes.

Instead, he dreams of a soldier, and at the funeral, he does not cry.

He finds his best friend and is still unremembered, and then, he cries.

(All he wanted was brown eyes and red lips and a mediocre ending.)

(He doesn’t get what he wants.)

(None of them ever do.)

 

**17\. (2015)**

 

While he’s running, he finds her. He wakes her up and holds her close. Just like him, she can’t sleep at night.

She has her mother’s eyes. Her father’s smile.

He hates her.

(If she died, he couldn’t be. He simply couldn’t be.)

(When people see, they never ask. Sometimes he thinks no one sees.)

(No one sees. No one at all.)

 

**18\. (2016)**

 

Sharon’s lips are soft. He tries to feel something, anything, but the guilt pooling in his stomach, but to no avail. The sky cackles with lightning in the midst of the grey and he knows it’ll rain soon.

When he pulls back, she is smiling softly at him. He can’t look at her, so he turns his head.

Blue eyes meet brown.

Bucky smiles.

He has never seen anything so painful in his life.

(He’s lived too many lives to have never seen a heart breaking.)

(Bucky will argue it’s already been broken for a long, long time.)

(He will not believe him.)

(Bucky will lie and say he’s fine.)

(Brown eyes will try to never meet blue again for some time.)

 

**19\. (2016)**

 

Tony’s eyes are raging. He can’t possibly kill the man in front of him, and he knows he’d let Tony murder him if it meant no bad blood on his hands.

Behind him, Bucky shakes.

He knows, Bucky would die if he died.

It’s the only way he can drag himself to his feet and keep fighting.

He must live. He must save. He must war.

(It hurts. Why must everything hurt?)

(Brown eyes have closed. This time, he is the one who cannot stop screaming.)

(It’s what Bucky wanted.)

 

**20\. (2016)**

 

At night, Bucky’s daughter cries for him. He doesn’t hear her under the ice, and her mother doesn’t hear her beneath the dirt.

Instead, he hears her. He holds her. He keeps her.

He cannot fix it with any amount of love.

(God, why couldn’t he have just gone down with the ship like he was supposed to?)

(Because he was never supposed to.)

 

**21\. (2017)**

 

Her hair is red, like her mother’s. He doesn’t know where she comes from, only that she’s everything he’ll ever need. She is the sun and the moon and the earth and the stars. He swallows his chances whenever she passes.

Her smile is like the opens windows of his apartment. Rays of sunshine and cool wind. Impromptu snow and crashing rain. Cracked glass. Paint peeling. Unable to close, the shutters banging unhappily.

She’s what he thinks about. Doesn’t talk about.

He dies as a casualty in a bigger hero’s battle. She mourns him, same as everyone else. She moves on, same as everyone else.

She’s never even looked his way.

(He used to kid himself. Said he didn’t care.)

(No one knew, so no one else did.)

(About him, that is.)

(She would’ve said that’s not true.)

(He knows better.)

 

**22\. (2018)**

 

He is a jungle cat. He moves as stealthily as one. He does not pause, he does not stop.

He forgives those who wrong him, though. Nobody can quite understand.

Sharon marries him per duty, and he loves her but never tells. She never finds out, though she watches the sad captain as he watches the sunset.

One day, he catches her hand as she’s screaming angrily at the sleeping man. She stops but never looks at him. She turns and walks away, back to her chambers.

He wakes the man and the captain smiles, but now he knows he himself never will.

(His kingdom never mentions it. When she disappears, they say she died of a foreign disease, unknown to them.)

(They are lying.)

(No one has died in his kingdom of anything but old age or war since god knows when.)

(He will never believe in a god, but for his own sake, he tries his hardest to believe in an afterlife.)

(It should be better than this one.)

(Second chances are a curse and a blessing. Ones he knows, deep down, he’ll never have and never truly want.)

 

**23\. (2018)**

 

By the river, the sun sets. Steve is looking at him with a soft smile. He doesn’t say a word, but his fingers are laced with those of the soldier’s only arm.

They are not who they used to be.

And for once in a very, very long time, the thought crosses his mind that maybe that’s okay.

(Their daughter doesn’t bother them in this moment. She never seems to be able to tell them she knows.)

(Maybe they will be able to move on?)

(No.)

(Brown eyes have never been able to look away from blue for long.)

 

**24\. (2019)**

 

A boy is found in the rubble. In a broken tube. They don’t speak as they fish him out, and he doesn’t cry or shout or smile when they lift him up and away.

Jaime, is the name he gives when asked. His voice is hoarse and his tone apathetic. His eyes are tired.

Bruce is quiet as they check the boy’s vitals. Jaime reminds him to much of himself, crosses his mind fleetingly. Bruce’s green eyes flick up to meet his and then quickly glance elsewhere.

(They have always and will always run away from this love.)

 

**25\. (2019)**

 

Their daughter meets Jaime when he’s released from the hospital, on a hot summer day, and he can see Bucky’s eyes brighten. His smile ease.

It’s still not enough. It can never be enough.

The boy cannot walk with the prosthetic Tony has made for him. He cannot walk at all.

One day the stub bleeds. He can only hear their children screaming. He drowns in the sounds of sorrow he’s already much too familiar with.

And when the infection takes Jaime, it also takes the light in their daughter’s eyes.

He screams but no one hears.

(Brown eyes fill with tears and blue ones are less than a foot away, but no words can be said. No thoughts can be conveyed.)

(They will die this way.)

(When asked if they are happy, they will lie.)

(It must be enough. It has to be enough.)

 

**26\. (2025)**

 

Steve falls to catch their daughter.

He falls to catch Steve.

In the end, they all fall together.

(The blood in the snow is said to be a deer’s.)

(The deers are dead. Instead, the hunters find wolves.)

(The snow becomes redder. Kings laugh.)

(This world will crumble. They say there is a chance. A slim one, but a chance. A way.)

(They are lying. Lying. Liars!)

(This world will break. Good riddance.)

 

**27\. (2031)**

 

The Widow becomes one. He bleeds out from the knife wound she left in his side. He does not beg, and she does not smile.

She is not so cruel.

She loved him.

(She will not cry.)

(She does not scream when his photograph is what ends her.)

(The wind was strong and the balcony was high and her knees were buckling.)

(Letting go was far easier than holding on.)

(What was there to hold onto in the first place?)

(She can’t remember.)

 

**28\. (2032)**

 

The afterlife is boring. The boy with nine bullet holes in his chest watches him. His name is Pietro, the souls around him whisper.

There is no point to this. There is no way to leave.

He will not give in to this hatred. He is better than this. He is better than this. He is better than this.

He looks down at his leg, scarred and green and red and oozing pus.

He vomits and lighting strikes the tree he’s perched in.

(He cannot die again, but oh, how he wishes.)

(Pietro never looks away.)

(He could fall down this hole forever and it would still not cure his pain.)

(He never saw his family when they came through. They never saw him.)

(He will never be able to allow himself to care.)

 

**29\. (2093)**

 

He cannot die. He always breathes. He cannot stop.

But she does. She fades. She is lost.

He places flowers on her makeshift grave. There are no more cemeteries. In the war, the humans stopped burying those who fell because there were simply too many to bury.

They lost the war, and so there was no one around to bury them.

The king who conquered them no longer laughs. He simply sleeps.

Meanwhile, he misses her smile.

(He then realizes he never saw it.)

(Did she even have one? He wonders.)

(He has too long to wonder. He has forever to wonder.)

(Forever to wish.)

(Forever to miss.)

(Oh, how we love what we have never had.)

 

**30\. (9736)**

 

They now all wander.

Where to, they don’t know.

What from, they don’t know.

Why at all, they don’t know.

When will it end.

Still one of them survives. He will not live. He will not ever try to remedy the universe. That has long fallen apart.

There is no hope.

There is no fear.

There is no love.

The storybooks, like this one, they are burned. Only he is around to remember, and he does not remember much of anything, except what there was and what there is and what he will always wish there used to be.

He cannot read.

He cannot care.

They will not go on together. Together does not exist.

_ Nothing _ exists.

(So now you know they have lied. The heroes are not the ones with happy endings.)

(There are no ends at all.)

 

**31\. (13657)**

 

This book will never close.

(The sad thing is it never opened.)

**Author's Note:**

> sorry


End file.
